How long can an air conditioner run on the Sorein Power Station?Updated 15 days ago

An air conditioner is the most energy-hungry appliance in your RV. Generally speaking, you should plan to use air conditioning sparingly. But how long can you run an air conditioner on a Sorein Power Station?

A rule of thumb for Dometic Penguin air conditioners

The short answer, for people who have Dometic Penguin 13.5k or 15k BTU air conditioners on their roof, is that each Sorein 2.1 kWh Extra Battery will give you about 60 to 90 minutes of air conditioner "runtime".  Since it's larger, a 2.4 kWh Battery Module will yield about 15% more runtime. 

"Runtime" is the length of time that the air conditioner is actually cooling. So if it cycles on and off, the effective time that you have air conditioning will be longer.

The long (but more accurate) answer

Before we launch into calculations, let's keep a few things in mind. 

1. Different air conditioner brands have different rates of power consumption. For this reason, you'll need to know the approximate power draw of your air conditioner.

The amount of power also varies according to the temperature and humidity outside. High heat and humidity force the air conditioner to work harder.

Unfortunately, the manufacturers don't always supply that information. As a rule of thumb, estimate a typical RV air conditioner at 1500W draw when the compressor is running.

• Approximately 1500W is average for Dometic air conditioners, which were used on most Airstreams made from the late 1990s through 2024.
• GE air conditioners used in some 2023 and later Airstreams draw approximately 1200W.
• Variable-speed inverter air conditioners by Furrion, Gree/Tosot, and Houghton are typically are about 25-30% more efficient overall. Power draw ranges from 800 to 1300 watts depending on the temperature and humidity.

Note: You can determine the amount of power your air conditioner is using at any given time, just by observing the front panel of the Sorein Power Station, with the air conditioning off and then after turning it on.

In the photo above, the Sorein is outputting 1666 watts, mostly to run a 15K BTU Dometic Penguin II air conditioner, while receiving 226 watts from solar panels. The Sorein is showing an estimate of 1 hour, 47 minutes, at this rate. It's important to remember that is an estimate, based on usage at that particular moment.

2. Keep in mind that the air conditioner is not be the only appliance using the power station. When you plug your RV into the power station, everything is energized, which means the onboard power converter will start charging the RV batteries, among other things. So your air conditioning time will be reduced by the amount of power you're using for other things at the same time.

How to calculate the expected runtime for your situation

Some simple math will allow us to estimate how much more time an extra battery would give you. The formula is:

• total Wh battery capacity ÷ power draw of air conditioner (in Watts) = continuous runtime

Let's use an example of an AIR GEAR x Sorein Power Station with two 2.4 Wh Battery Modules. The total capacity is 4.8 kWh.

Assuming that you have a Dometic Penguin 15k air conditioner, drawing 1500 Watts when running. Divide the battery capacity by the consumption rate of the air conditioner and you have the runtime. 

In this case 4800 Watt-hours ÷ 1500 Watts equals 3.2 hours. However, because the power draw of your air conditioner varies, and also because other electrical items in the RV will be consuming power at the same time, you should not expect to get exactly that length of runtime.